First Long Run with Henry!

The boys have been biking with Mama as she runs for the last year or so. But it just hasn't worked out to do it with me - I tend to do most of my workouts before they get up. I knew once summer started, I'd have a better chance to bring Henry on a run with me, but it still hadn't worked for the first 3 weeks: three weeks ago I ran early, two weeks ago it was about to storm so it wouldn't be smart to bring the boys with me, and last week I ran really early while camping.

But on Monday, I posted this:

First time Henry biked with me during my long run! We went 10.5 miles (with the middle 4 miles around 6:10 pace), and we saw 3 turkeys, both bald eagles (Mr. and Mrs.) in the nest I like to watch across the river, and had a close encounter with a LARGE coyote! (There have been murmurs of a coywolf in the neighborhood, and what we saw was around the size of a German shepherd, so it was either a very large coyote or possibly a coywolf!)

(I wasn't able to get my phone up in time to get a photo of the coyote/coywolf, but we both got a good look before it sleeked back into the trees. We both said it was about the size of a German Shepard, and later we looked up that German Shepards are 49-88 lbs and coyotes are 15-46 lbs. So either this was an off-the-charts large urban coyote [which is very possibly] or some sort of hybrid.)

And I posted these 5 pics:

Heading down the Marshall hill around a 1/2 mile in.


Riding along West River Parkway in MPLS around mile 3.


Crossing back to the east side of the river after a few hard miles after mile 7.


Near the old Shriner's Hospital during mile 8.


Back up Marshall hill.

My left achilles was still tight and sore from my interval workout on Friday, so I kept telling Henry that we might have to cut the run short, but it didn't act up at all! I got in 10 miles and felt OK!

Only 4 "at pace" miles instead of my usual 6 as I didn't want to over-stress
my already sore heel. Pace miles 3 to 7 (splits 6 through 14 on this map).


I also snapped this pic before the selfie with Henry on the bridge above.

Henry was a champ and did great! He would call out my speed at times: 8.x mph during my warm-up, and occasionally over 10 mph during my "pace" miles. He said his legs got a little tired coming up the hill at the end, but I told him they'd be tired if we did that hill right away as well as it's a good-sized hill!

So this workout was not great for a long run, but I felt good because my heel didn't act up any more! It was a bit sore later in the day, but not as bad as the day before, so that's a WIN after a long run! And I saw my chiro later in the day for some ultrasound and some light A.R.T. on my achilles. *IF* it keeps feeling OK, I'd like to hit the track in a few days for another short/hard interval workout before the mile race in just over 2 weeks.